Orange : City Bid for School Building Is Rejected

The city submitted the only bid for Orange Unified School District’s vacant administration building, but it was rejected for being too low.

The district started advertising for bids in November, after Chapman University said it wanted to buy the historic building on Glassell Street for its new law school.

Chapman officials decided not to bid, however, because they thought the district’s minimum asking price of $2.4 million was too high, university spokesman Ruth Wardwell said. But city officials had vowed to help the university find a site for the law school in Orange and they submitted a bid to obtain the building.

Arrangements to sell the building to Chapman or find some other use for it would come later, Mayor Joanne Coontz said.

“We haven’t discussed how it would work, but we are certainly interested in cooperating with Chapman,” she said.

Coontz said the bid was sealed and she did not want to disclose the city’s offer, but it apparently was less than the $2.4 million requested.

“It was a non-responsive bid,” Supt. Robert L. French said. He said he will come back to the school board with recommendations on how to proceed in January or February.

School Board President Maureen Aschoff said neither Chapman nor the city should give up hope. “This is the beginning of the process,” she said. “We’ll do our best to work with the city of Orange and Chapman University.”

Chapman still has two years to find a permanent home for its law school, which will open in temporary quarters in the fall, Wardwell said.